Boys

On January 6, the Washington Post's Barton Gellman revealed in a front-page article, sourced to "advisors" and "confidants" of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that Annan had "obtained what he regards as convincing evidence that United Nations arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in American efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime."
But Gellman, who had produced some of the best and most enterprising coverage of UNSCOM during the past year, had known about the UNSCOM-spying story for months--all the way down to its "operational details," such as the brand names of surveillance equipment used in eavesdropping operations--and was in a position to publish what he knew by early October 1998. But at the behest of a senior U.S. government official, he and the Washington Post's top management chose not to reveal the extent of U.S. intelligence's links to (and possible abuse of) UNSCOM, for reasons of "national security."

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